Big Joke

The press spent Monday morning creaming over Laura Bush’s “performance” at the White House correspondents dinner and the fact she had let Washingtonia in on a little something the rest of us have known for a while – that her husband’s a joke.

Some reports suggested there was political calculation behind the First Lady’s jabs at her husband. The gal from the “NewYork Times” took the bait, crediting Ms. Laura with “humanizing” her husband whom the citizenry have decided they don’t like much.

Those of us who oppose him stopped the jokes long ago. It does humanize him and at the outset that didn’t seem possible.

In the end, if Bush is a joke, he’s not a very funny one what with his life of ever-regenerated privilege rolling along while the terrible tragedies unleashed at his behest bedevil the planet.

Somewhere someone is missing a limb, somewhere else it’s a parent that’s missing a child (too many, really). And somewhere George W. Bush is at a banquet getting a chuckle at just how well things always seem to turn out for him.

And aren’t we all capable of laughing at ourselves when victory is daily bread?

Meanwhile, there are echoes in the mass media about the (p)resident overplaying his hand and drawing too much of a mandate from too small a margin of victory.

the scribe would suggest the media helped him along plenty in that direction.

The guy who lost to him, continues his good deeds.

Sen. Kerry sent out an e-mail yesterday announcing a road trip on behalf of his health care plan for all children.

His e-mail points out that 11 million children in the United States have no health insurance and that the number is certainly not shrinking. Nonetheless, he pointed out, House majority leader Tom DeLay presided over the slashing of funds for that very purpose in the new (r)epublican budget.

“I’m not going to stand for this and I know you won’t either.”

His answer is to make this trip and highlight the concerns of people whose finances have been destroyed by illness, yours can be to sign his petition at www.kidsfirsact.com .

the scribe thinks Kerry, despite his loss, will be tough to beat next time around simply because he’s out dealing politics and policy rather than saving money up for a commercial blitz four years hence.

The (r)epublicans better be careful.

With Howard Dean running around retooling the party’s infrastructure and Kerry out there learning how (and who) to lead full-time, their little pirate’s booty party looks awfully ill-advised.

However...

Robert Novak, the guy who outed Valerie Plame over the Niger yellow cake business and has sat by while lesser lights in the media firmament prepare for jail over the same matter, wrote all about DeLay still having clout.

He correctly pointed out that DeLay managed to hold his caucus together and pass a budget with lots of red (r)epublican meat in it.

The Dems are showing a newfound cohesiveness, but it comes as second nature to the GOP

Here’s Novak on his own:

“DeLay has made mistakes, though many – such as playing golf overseas on a special interest’s dime - hardly warrant the death penalty.”

the scribe would point out it’s not the free golf game that’s the crime, but what the special interest got later, in exchange, for it.

the scribe would also point out that it's (r)epublicans who are the party of capital punishment; what we in the opposition would like is for DeLay to act honorably and resign as the price for his ethical indiscretions.

More Novak: “Former aides and associates have entered Washington’s bipartisan culture of lobbying greed, though DeLay cannot be held responsible for them.”

That’s also neo-(r)epublican credo: the buck stops below.

More still: “He has been rude to reporters, lobbyists and even colleagues, though that is a common failing among strong leaders.”

That’s also a new wrinkle on the broad gauge man: manners, decency, and reason are properly dispensed with where “getting things done” is the focus.

Bullshit.

He closes in truth: “The overriding point is that DeLay is the most important [(r)]epublican leader in Congress. That is why George W. Bush was pictured with him on newspaper front pages all over America Wednesday morning...DeLay figures to be around longer than the conventional wisdom imagines.”

These guys have no shame, just the votes.

Because you have to do something besides bitch, and since the state won’t be bailing you and/or yours out life-damaging events any time soon, the scribe alerts you to an article in “Red Pepper” (the name saying it all) which is put together by Brits http://www.redpepper.org.uk/ .

It’s by a guy named Colin Ward of whom we know nothing about and entitled “Anarchism Tomorrow.”

The gist of it is that there is little to the loss of benevolence from those who govern us; we weren’t getting much to begin with. It talks about “the growth of self-help and mutual aid in our [theirs] society after the industrial revolution."

He writes: “Urbanized peasants, displaced by rural enclosures and herded into the overcrowded slums of the new manufacturing towns, put aside pennies to set up sick clubs, coffin clubs, provident and friendly societies of every kind as well as penny bank, penny schools and penny doctors.

“They subscribed to building societies and mechanics’ institutes, and in the course of the 19th century built up the huge federated networks of the co-operative movement and the trade union movement.”

He’s talking about everybody in the sinking raft pulling resources together and essentially building their own thing, or sub-thing since revolution is dead and the beast is here to stay.

(the last part being more the scribe than Mr. Ward).

There is, according to the article, evidence of this direct action and “the habit of being free” in the squatters movements of youth across the world and mostly, again, in Britain.

Although he wasn’t 100 percent positive of eventual success, Ward is clear on what he believes to be the virtues of “parallel organizations, counter-organizations, alternative organizations, which exemplify the anarchist method.”

And you thought it was all black blocks and window smashing!

Finally the scribe will relay this list of web pages inexplicably published by the “San Diego Union-Tribune” where socially responsible investors can find information they need.

Here they are:

Environmental Investors Network – www.environmentalinvestors.com

Good Money – www.goodmoney.com/srinfo.htm

The Green Life – www.thegreenlife.org/investing.html

The Green Money Journal – www.greenmoneyjournal.com

Social Investment Forum – www.socialinvest.org

Good night and pardon any typos in the morning edition.